Speak
by strawberryfinn
Summary: JONAS. Erin is a sarcastic, outspoken new girl. Put her next to a popular and equally sarcastic Joe Lucas, and tensions fly. But underneath these sharp insults, there's something deeper that neither of them wanted.


**SPEAK**

**Author's Note**: With the premiere of JONAS, I'm posting some fanfictions. This story is one that I've actually really enjoyed writing--it's a Joe story, so enjoy!

**Summary**: Erin is a sarcastic, outspoken new girl. Put her next to a popular and equally sarcastic Joe Lucas, and tensions fly. But underneath these sharp insults, there's something deeper that neither of them wanted.

**Warnings**: Language

**Genre**: Romance/General

* * *

**1.**

Erin looks at herself in the mirror. Her pale face stares back at her. Sighing in frustration, she pulls up her hair into a ponytail. Now her head looks huge. Isn't _this_ just great?

She lets out an exasperated noise and scowls at herself. Her blue eyes are squinting back at her, her full lips purse.

She tries smiling. There, now she looks better.

She looks at the clothes she has on. T-shirt overlapped with a knee-length dress on top of jeans. She looks decent enough; now her _hair._

Why is she trying to look so nice anyways? It doesn't even matter, she tells herself. But she knows it does.

She finally decides to just leave her hair down, brushing it a couple of times and then clipping part of it up with a barrette.

It's time to go.

-

"Bye, hon, have a nice day, ok?" her dad smirks at her as she opens the door and steps out onto the pavement. She throws him a dirty look. "Come on, Er Bear, it won't be that bad."

She winces. She hates it when her father calls her that.

"Bye Dad," she sulks, starting to walk away.

"Bye, baby," he smiles, and then drives away.

She grimaces. It's his fault they're here right now in _New Jersey_ of all places. Stupid job transfer.

Oh well. It's just going to be for half a year or so and then she'll go back to Connecticut. And if she really needs it, the two states are close enough.

Grabbing her backpack straps close to her shoulders she looks at the school before her. Red bricks, cement stairs, big opening; it looks inviting enough.

She'd see about that.

-

The secretary is probably the most annoying woman Erin has ever had the privilege to meet. She flusters around her, asking her the same questions repeatedly, and Erin just rolls her eyes to give her the same answers. This absolutely blows. She hates New Jersey already; she wants Connecticut back.

Finally Ms. Smethurst manages to finish her bustling to give Erin a schedule. Erin looks sympathetically out at the line of kids waiting to get their schedules.

"You're first class is English," Ms. Smethurst—or is it Smithurst—tells her and rushes her out the door without a further explanation.

Room 206. Where the _hell_ is that?

Erin looks at the paper hard and flips it over. Good thing there's a map, but it looks like it was drawn by a kindergartener. This stupid school.

Sneering sarcastically, she manages to finally find the classroom, a good eight minutes after the bell has already rung. She stands there in the doorway and the teacher at the desk looks at her.

"Who are you?" she asks sharply, "and why are you late?"

Erin snorts in disgust. "I'm new here, and this map was really quite pathetic."

"Well, why don't you tell us a little about yourself? You know, the standard clichés," the teacher ignores Erin's latter statement. "I'm Miss Jordans." Miss Jordans fixes her hair and adjusts her eyeglasses over her sharp nose.

"Ok, I'm Erin Robertson and I'm sixteen," she spits out, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I like painting my nails and boys and I _hate_ New Jersey. I like walks on the beach and taking pictures with my friends and-"

"You may stop there, Miss Robertson," Miss Jordans stops her. "I don't enjoy you making a mockery of my superiority."

"You asked me to give you standard clichés with was exactly what I did," Erin tells her, looking her straight in the eye. She ignores the laughter and the smirks from the students who she's already caught the attention of.

Miss Jordans looks intimidated. "That's enough, Miss Robertson. You may go sit over there next to Riley," she points at a seat next to an eager, scrawny-looking girl with pale skin and brown hair. "We're discussing _Romeo and Juliet_ and its hints at what perhaps Shakespeare's opinion on love. Have you read it?"

"Yes," Erin sits up straight in her desk, knowing that eyes are on her.

"Well then, you'll fall right into this conversation," Miss Jordans says. "Yes, Max?"

A boy with dark hair and green eyes with little specks of grey dressed in a plain black jacket raises clears his throat. All the kids in the class roll their eyes and a couple of them snort disgustedly and choke, "Suck-up." Erin's immediately understood that he's the teacher's pet.

Alex answers, "Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is a grand passion, and as such it is blinding; it can overwhelm a person powerfully and completely. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet is linked from the moment of its inception with death; Romeo catches sight of Juliet and falls instantly in love with her even though their families are rivals. From that point on, love seems to push the lovers closer to love and violence, not farther from it. Romeo and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide, and a willingness to experience it. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. In the play, love emerges as an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction as to happiness. But in its extreme passion, the love that Romeo and Juliet experience also appears so exquisitely beautiful that few would want, or be able, to resist its power."

Erin gapes. He obviously got that off Sparknotes or an essay or something, but Miss Jordans fails to understand. She beams at Max and continues. "Anybody have anything else to say?"

_What? She can't let him get away with that!_ Erin thinks incredulously and impulsively raises her hand.

"Yes, Erin?"

"I have something to say to that." Without waiting for Miss Jordans to approve, Erin starts talking. "I don't believe that Romeo and Juliet's love was real. It's clearly obvious that they're both too young to understand what true love is. Romeo is extremely fickle; he immediately falls in love with Juliet right when he sees her but before he was distraught and swearing his love for Rosaline. Friar Lawrence even later notes that perhaps their love is not true when he notes that perhaps it is in the appearance that men go by, not the virtue of the woman. Therefore, their youthful love is nothing passionate; overall their love was worthless and they killed themselves for an idea; a thought of love that never truly existed."

She stops. Eyes are on her.

Miss Jordans looks impressed. Alex's cheeks are pink with embarrassment; he obviously doesn't usually get objected to. "That was quite an argument you put up there, Erin." Her voice lilts as she looks around the room and spots another hand. "Yes, Mr. Lucas?"

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Reviews are always appreciated.


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